VICTOR JOECKS: Five facts that will make you more conservative

Sometimes the most effective way to win a political argument is to make sure your opponent knows what’s actually happening.

Recently, I had a chance to speak to a class of UNLV students. The professor who graciously invited me said the group was split politically. I asked the students to take an anonymous quiz with questions on the details of various hot-button issues. What I hoped to demonstrate is that, oftentimes, political arguments stem from people not agreeing on the facts.

Here’s a chance to test your knowledge. No cheating.

1. In the 1920s, an average of more than 450,000 people died annually from floods, droughts, storms wildfire and extreme temperatures. How many people died from such weather-related events in 2020?

2. In 2021, the U.S. Department of Labor reported women earned 84 cents for every dollar earned by a man. Does that statistic adjust for factors such as job type, job location, danger and hours worked?

3. According to The Washington Post database, how many unarmed African-Americans did police shoot in 2022?

4. Which child is more likely to live in poverty: a black child who’s living with two parents in a first marriage or a white child who’s living with a single parent?

5. Biologically, when does human life begin?

Don’t worry. I’ll give you the answers, but I also want you to consider the implication of these facts.

1. If extreme weather events now killed 20 million people annually, that would suggest global warming is a significant problem.

But in 2020, this death toll had plummeted to 14,000. That’s a decrease of more than 96 percent from a century ago before accounting for the quadrupling of the global population. It’s why conservatives aren’t stressed about global warming, even if some of it may be caused by humans. The innovation and wealth powered by fossil fuels has significantly reduced the lethal risk mankind faces from natural disasters.

2. If a woman worked 35 hours a week and a man worked 40 hours weekly at the same job, you would expect the man to earn more. That wouldn’t be bias, just common sense. And so it is with the supposed gender pay gap. It’s calculated by looking at the raw median annual earnings of men and women. Once you adjust for other factors, the gender pay gap all but vanishes.

3. If police shot hundreds of unarmed African Americans a year, that would suggest a systemic problem. But The Washington Post database has compiled only 12 such confrontations for 2022. In most of those cases, the person shot was physically fighting a police officer. Given that there are more than 45 million Black Americans, police shooting unarmed African Americans isn’t a wide-ranging problem.

4. The left’s war on the traditional family has ramifications. The child poverty rate for a white child living with a single parent is 33 percent. For a black child living with two parents in a first marriage, it’s 13 percent.

5. Most people would agree that’s it’s always wrong to intentionally take an innocent human life. That’s why the most important factor when discussing abortion is establishing when human life begins. Many abortion proponents act like this is unknowable. Wrong. Upon fertilization, the egg and sperm combine to create “a single, whole human being,” as Georgetown University biologist Dianne Irving wrote in the International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy in 1999.

Political conversations rarely happen quickly. But if you want to move someone toward your position, ask them these questions and respectfully point them toward the facts.

Contact Victor Joecks at vjoecks@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4698. Follow @victorjoecks on X.